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By Michelle Hough, Caritas Internationalis
It’s 8.30am on Valentine’s Day, I’m at Rome’s Termini Station and I’m waiting for the Pope. Working for Caritas is never boring and can sometimes be quite surreal.
This year is European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion. Caritas Europa has launched a big campaign called “Zero Poverty”. Bishops around Italy and the whole of Europe are visiting social services projects in their dioceses today to show solidarity with the poor. Pope Benedict, as Bishop of Rome, has come to the Caritas hostel at Termini Station.
I’m in a press enclosure with other Caritas colleagues and journalists and the Pope will come by on the raised walkway any minute. I’m almost 6 feet tall in my heels but we’re far too low to get a good view. I feel a bit like Zacchaeus, the diminutive tax collector out of the bible, he climbed up a tree to get a better view when Jesus walked by. I think about heaving myself up onto the railings so I can get a good photo for the Caritas website, but I might just end up being told off by the Pope’s bodyguards.
Even though it’s purely coincidental that Pope Benedict is visiting the hostel on Valentine’s Day (today is also Saints Cyril and Methodius’ Day for the Church), you could say that love is the theme of the Pope’s visit.
“For Rome, the Caritas hostel is a place where love is not just a word or a feeling, but something concrete, that allows the light of God to enter the lives of the whole community,” says the Pope after he arrives at the hostel. (more…)









